2023-07-12 04:00:00
Some residents of Moircy (a section of the municipality of Libramont-Chevigny, province of Luxembourg) have to deal with a veritable invasion of flies every summer. Aware of the problem, the municipality has not yet been able to establish with certainty the source of these nuisances. Samples were taken for two months by the faculty of Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech. Results are expected in the summer.
“It’s catastrophic”, launches Chantal. The 61-year-old Ardennaise wrote to us via the orange Alert us button, because she can no longer endure what she describes as a “invasion of flies at Moircy”.
This problem is not recent. According to her, homes and gardens in this village of Libramont have been infested with flies for at least four years. But, “this year is worse than anything”.
It’s almost impossible to eat outside
Chantal no longer lives in Moircy. But she rents a cottage there at the beginning of the summer. “It’s almost impossible to eat outside. When I have a glass, there are six flies on it. I don’t even dare to take food out of the fridge anymore”. And the flies, she says, also come inside the lodge.
She doesn’t know what to do anymore to hunt the insects: “I bought a spray, I put sticky strips. There are strips on the windows. We also put a mosquito net in front of the front door. The windows, we dare not open them. Only the evening when we go to bed, we open a little because for the moment with these temperatures, it is not possible to live with the windows closed”.
Despite all this, the flies continue to disturb Chantal and her loved ones: “It’s hellish. Before I go out, I put the spray on and when I come back, I sometimes have trouble breathing at
cause of the product. But there are still some, some are resistant. My companion came for a week, but then he came back because he mightn’t take it anymore”.
And the couple is not the only one to be bothered by the untimely presence of hundreds, thousands of flies: “The municipality of Libramont can no longer receive calls. Everyone is complaining. There are meetings. But, for the moment, nothing is being done”she believes.
Until we know where the flies come from, it’s hard to do anything
“If the problem continues, I don’t think I’ll really want to come back, because it’s really disgusting to eat in these conditions, it’s not possible”confides the vacationer once more.
The mayor of Libramont-Chevigny, Laurence Crucifix, confirms the problem denounced by Chantal: “The flies are abnormally numerous”.
Faced with questions from citizens who believe that “it does not move”she says “take this subject very seriously”. “We have regular contact with the locals.. Until you know where the flies are coming from, it’s hard to do anything.”. Analyzes are being carried out at the moment, she specifies.
These analyzes are overseen by Rudy Caparros Megido, professor of entomology at the faculty of Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech at the University of Liège: “We have not yet fully identified the source. We have a final thesis that has been organized on this and which is supported by my laboratory”.
The goal ? “We are trying with different traps (regarding ten) to locate the source of these flies which have been coming back continuously for four, five years”he says.
What nuisances for the inhabitants of Moircy?
Every summer, the inhabitants are entitled to the same inconveniences. “Unfortunately for the people in question, during the summer, there are thousands of flies that are in their garden, on their terrace, which probably come to the most exposed houses, to warm themselves in the sun. Then as soon as these people go out with food or something, all the flies come home”emphasizes Professor Rudy Caparros Megido.
“It’s more inconvenience than risk as such”adds Professor Frédéric Francis, the dean of the faculty of Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech: “These flies don’t really transmit any particular disease. The only thing is that by wandering around in different places, on different mediums, it can sometimes carry certain bacteria and such which might also potentially have some implications for digestive disorders, but there should be plenty of it”.
How to explain the massive presence of flies?
“The first thing is to be able to locate, identify the well-targeted species in order to know its diet and the environment in which we will find it. Here, we found in particular a species of common house fly that we knows how to grow in animal droppings. From then on, we can target the places where we will find these animals and droppings.”informs Professor Frédéric Francis.
For him, “It’s linked to the management of animal waste. If you clean frequently, if you eliminate this resource, this matrix, to have the development of larvae, you will have normal populations of flies, which will not be problematic”.
More, “if we find ourselves on the one hand having a lot of material, which will serve as an available substrate for these larvae and if there are also periods of heat which will cause the development cycles of the flies to be shortened, reproduction will be more intense. You will have a greater number of individuals. When we know that each female fly will be able to lay dozens of eggs per day, we quickly reach exponential growth, with aspects of invasion . There are tens or hundreds of thousands of flies that can come out of a place. And when they spread, it becomes annoying for the neighborhood”.
Why does it take so long to identify the precise source of the fly bloom?
This is not the first year that the faculty of Gembloux has been called to the rescue to identify the cause of this nuisance: “In previous years, we came to take samples from chicken production to see if it didn’t come from there, but the facilities had been cleaned. And faced with clean facilities, we can’t point to a person responsible. We often fell in these situations”says Professor Rudy Caparros Megido.
This is why this year a protocol has been put in place, from the start of the season: end of April, beginning of May. “Preventively, we decided to put a number of traps in different potentially strategic places, to try to see where these flies can come from”.
The ten traps are raised each week: “So it’s 40 centimeter tupperware filled with flies that are collected in each trap”.
These collections have just been stopped on the first of July, “since we had the whole exponential phase: from very few flies to astronomical quantities. There, normally we had the whole range of fly evolution”.
Concretely, this certainly represents “60,000 to 70,000 individuals”maybe more. “Once we have sorted and identified the flies, we will be able to incriminate this or that trap which has collected the most individuals”emphasizes Professor Rudy Caparros Megido.
The final report is expected by the end of July. But, first results to be confirmed, would seem to designate a chicken farm: “The traps, close to these installations, seem to give the most flies”.
When the source is formally identified, advice can be given to prevent the untimely proliferation of flies in the future.
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